18 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



to bring about a higher average, and thus make more successful, 

 more attractive, and more profitable this branch of the industries of 

 the farm. 



While we would continue to encourage the ambition, and stimu- 

 late the efforts of those who desire to gain for our State the honor and 

 distinction of producing the best runners and the fastest trotters in 

 the Union, or the world, we should not forget that the greatest bene- 

 fits are to be secured in breeding up large numbers of horses to a high 

 standard of excellence for every department of industry in which the 

 horse is used as a help to man. 



One of the best tests of the skill and wisdom of a people as breed- 

 ers of horses is found in the efficiency of the cavalry they are able to 

 put into the field in case of war. The agricultural society that aims 

 to promote, in the breeding of horses, the highest standard of practical 

 value in the largest number of animals, renders the greatest service 

 to the State, and at the same time is most likely to develop exceptional 

 speed and endurance on the course, either as runners or trotters. 

 The practice of showing over-fed and over-fattened animals at the 

 fairs as breeding animals should be discouraged as a violation of the 

 first principles of the science of breeding, and as calculated to keep 

 away from the fairs all those who will not consent to risk the practi- 

 cal success of their breeding enterprises for the sake of gaining the 

 prizes ofi'ered by the Society, and the advertising advantage to follow. 

 If the Society desires to test the comparative value of different breeds 

 of stock cattle, sheep, or hogs, as beef, mutton, or pork producers, 

 the practical way to do this is to hold a fat stock show distinct from 

 the show of breeding animals. Let breeding animals be shown in 

 the condition that experience has proven best calculated to secure the 

 •most valuable results. Whether the past course pursued by the 

 Society has been a popular one, has secured for it the largest and 

 most general patronage, and tended to place it upon a self-sustain- 

 ing basis, and secured for it the greatest efficiency in bringing about 

 practical and valuable business results to the industries it is intended 

 to foster, may be judged by the following facts, developed by an 

 examination of the entry and premium books of the Society. 



In a State ranking among the first, if not the very first, in the Union 

 for the production of good horses for the course, the road, or the farm, 

 we are confronted with the fact that but fifteen owners of thorough- 

 bred horses think it worth their while to show their stock at the State 

 fair, and that but 93 out of the 75,000 owners of all classes of horses in 

 the State think enough of their horses to place them in competition 

 for the liberal premiums offered by the Society. Of the 500,000 horses 

 in the State, of an average quality and value as high as any other 

 State can boast of, less than 300 were brought forward at the Society 

 fair as representative animals, and two jacks and two mules were the 

 only representatives shown of the 30,000 animals of this class owned 

 in this State. No other State in the Union ranks higher for its many 

 heads of magnificent specimens and well-bred short horn cattle than 

 does California, and yet at our State fairs less than a dozen owners 

 and breeders are found in competition for premiums amounting in 

 this department alone to thousands of dollars, and for the whole State, 

 containing from sixty to seventy thousand practical farmers, and 

 nearly a million of cattle of a quality averaging higher than in any 

 other State in the Union, there ajjpears but 25 exhibitors to make up 

 the grand cattle show, and that exhibition, though in reality a fine one, 



